Little Hunter
To anyone else, Kyle Spetz might seem like a mundanely normal office laborer.
He arrived every morning at precisely seven-thirty. He stopped in the food court on the ground floor. One bacon egg and cheese sandwich for breakfast. One orange juice. Lacking orange juice he simply acquired water. He ate and was finished by seven fifty at which point he proceeded up the stairs—bypassing the elevator—to his office on the high floor.
He stopped for nothing.
Greeted no one.
He walked into the room, set his briefcase beside the desk, and sat down.
After that, he engaged in hours of seemingly mundane phone calls, but Nanku noticed patterns in his speech. Phrases that didn't follow or make sense. Anyone simply walking by the room might think nothing of what they overheard, but listening to him all day until he left gave her a great deal of uncertainty.
Unable to really hear the other voices or see what he did on his computer and phone, Nanku wasn't sure of the context. He was up to something though and it was probably criminal.
At noon exactly he went to lunch.
The same food court in his own office building. Whatever the daily special was. After a week, Nanku could firmly say the 'daily' special was inaccurately named because it was always hamburgers. He got one of those with cheese and pickles, a diet soda, and some chips. After thirty minutes he was back in his office doing the same thing as before.
At two he left the same way he'd come.
The first day Nanku lost him. Extricating herself from the building came with more complications than expected and she gave up lest anything draw attention. She wasn't going to make that mistake twice.
She waited and the next day he was back, and she had a clear eye on how she'd get out of her hiding place to follow him.
After his work, he went to a warehouse. He didn't go inside. Didn't call anyone. He parked his car, got out, did a quick look around, and got back in. The containers inside seemed to contain nothing but drugs. Nanku wasn't well versed, but she assumed they were smuggled or something.
Boston was a much bigger city than Brockton Bay, but bigger made it easier for her to avoid heroes. She only came anywhere near any twice and they flew right by her without seeing anything.
Unless they wanted to trick her, the Boston Protectorate wasn't looking for her.
Admittedly, that would be interesting.
It was boring watching him.
After the warehouse, he went to a few different places. Haircuts once a week. A gym twice. Massage—and it was a massage, Nanku had checked—and parent-teacher conferences with the school board.
By any account, Kyle Spetz was a model man of upstanding and great character.
If you never knew about the fine collection of Nazi memorabilia in his basement. The man had a damn shrine. Nanku helped assemble the shrine on the clan ship after the elders decided to move some skulls around. They were less reverent about it than Kyle Spetz was about his Hitler picture.
A trophy room to a failed tyrant and his ideology of wanton murder.
Pathetic.
He barely ever even set foot in the room.
His wife and daughter did.
So, Nanku waited until Friday.
On Fridays, Kyle Spetz left the office and disappeared. She'd tried to follow him for three weeks but could never figure out where he went. The man got far too close to the Boston PRT building and she'd been unwilling to risk it.
That was fine.
Wherever he went, he was there for hours.
Hours was all the time Nanku needed.
She spent two weeks watching the family at home. Tracking their activities and routines and watching the neighbors. No slip-ups. Not this time.
On the sixth week since she entered Boston, Nanku approached the family home from behind.
A swarm covered her against the dark. Dusk and Dawn entered through an open window on the second floor to lay in wait. Using her wristblades Nanku cut the bolt on the back door and quietly entered the house.
The wife and daughter were in their sad little shrine watching some sad little movie. Nanku didn't care to even glance at the contents.
She drew a line. Readied black widows. Dozens of spiders were delivered by wasps and bees, and they began weaving the line she would need. She'd have if the usual schedule held.
Plenty of time.
Nanku entered the shrine silently. Easier with the door open. Creeping back and forth, she set her lines, used a heavy couch as a weight, and stepped between her hostages.
"Don't move."
They moved.
The daughter lunged to the side but the gun she wanted was firmly gunked up with wasps. Before a sound even left her throat Nanku pulled one line tight and gagged the girl with the sharp wire. The mother shot to her feet and directly into the noose Nanku had set over her head. She pulled it taut and hauled the woman back into her seat.
They kicked and thrashed, and Nanku deactivated her cloak.
"I killed Fenja. Menja. Crusader. Stormtiger. Cricket. A bunch I don't remember the name of."
The names gave both women pause.
"I'll kill you too," Nanku lied, "unless you sit down and be silent."
A lie in a lie.
But they didn't know that.
The mother started to resist but the daughter stopped her. Even with a line biting at the corners of her mouth and sending trails of blood down her cheeks. She shook her head and whimpered. That seemed to get the woman under control.
Nanku didn't even know their names.
She didn't care.
"Good. Sit down and shut up."
She wasted no time.
Dusk and Dawn entered the room and with their help, Nanku extended her lines and secured both women to the couch. She stuffed their mouths with rags to keep them silent and turned out all the lights.
All but a trail leading to the sad little trophy room.
Nanku made sure her hostages were well secured and then set her plan into motion.
"I don't kill those who can't defend themselves. You'll both survive tonight."
The words immediately got the women's attention and Nanku very visibly looked at the door. Their heads turned and they watched dozens of spiders crawl across the doorway.
They hauled a dark line across the threshold.
A fairly visible dark line cast against the light of the hall.
"Sit here. Be quiet. Maybe no one joins the other dead Nazis tonight."
Dusk and Dawn took either end of the line in their jaws and settled to wait. Nanku rigged a simple net trap in the dark.
And she settled to wait.
It took an hour. Nanku expected securing the house and keeping the women still would be more work than it turned out to be. The time wasn't wasted. It gave her more opportunity to firmly secure her trap in place.
Kyle Spetz drove up casually. Got out of his car. Checked his phone. The mailbox. Went to his front door.
He seemed to realize something was wrong when he opened it. Despite a brief pause and a quick look around, he didn't call out to anyone. No 'honey I'm home.' Do Nazis do that?
The women heard his arrival, and they watched Nanku with uncertain eyes.
Nanku pulled a spear from her belt and let it extend. A few more spiders hurried across the floor while they weren't looking. Nanku set one hand behind her back and hoped she appeared casual.
Kyle Spetz walked through his home and checked the rooms one at a time. From a drawer, he pulled a gun, but Nanku had already removed the bullets. He noticed and set it aside for a kitchen knife instead.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
He walked down the hall and focused on the open door.
Nanku activated her cloak.
The girl reacted first. As her father's shadow fell over the doorway she began wailing and shaking. The bleeding in the corners of her mouth started again. Nanku wasn't going to kill the poor thing, but if she killed herself that was her fault.
Kyle Spetz looked the room over and frowned.
Nanku had to hand it to him.
He was not a complete fool.
His wife however was.
She nodded her head and pointed her fingers as best she could. Down. Low near the floor.
Krieg looked down and spotted the line Nanku had set.
He hesitated a moment.
Nanku's swarm began releasing their held threads.
Krieg was not a fool.
He knew a trap when he saw one and he didn't take the bait.
The man turned and started back the way he'd come while reaching for his phone.
Only one number was dialed.
Dusk and Dawn threw themselves from their corners and yanked the line hard.
Dozens of threads of spider silk yanked with it. A fully woven and reinforced net came racing down the hall. Krieg cursed as the nets hit him and pulled him back into the room. Nanku pulled the line in her hand and more nets swung up and hoisted Krieg into the air.
A few of the strings snapped, but she'd set dozens upon dozens.
Krieg's power wasn't one she could deal with non-lethally.
So, she simply didn't bother to deal with it at all.
The man could hang in a net and spin about as Dusk and Dawn ran around the room, tightening the strings and binding them all into one big twist.
Krieg hung suspended and Nanku smirked behind her mask.
She'd tested it more than once. Thin lines of silk across doors and halls. Set them in his path for him to walk through. He never noticed, but she knew standing objects seemed unaffected by his power. Anything not moving directly toward him seemed unaffected.
Krieg could manipulate kinetic energy.
He did nothing to something that was just sitting there.
Nanku dropped her cloak and stepped across the room toward the man. He was still spinning as Dusk and Dawn pulled the lines in their mouths taut. He saw her a few times as he twisted.
"You," he grumbled.
"You know what I want," Nanku replied.
She grabbed the net and twisted. There was odd resistance. Like pulling at a magnet that was stuck and needed a little more force to move.
Nanku brought Krieg around and faced him.
The man was trying to cut the silk with his knife, but that wouldn't work. She'd tested it herself.
Stabbing her spear into the ground, Nanku raised her hands and unplugged her mask. She removed it and fixed the item to her belt. A swarm of bugs poured into the room. They buzzed and chittered to a deafening storm and silenced everything.
Krieg looked at her face impassively.
"You know who I am now," she said over the swarm.
"Weaver's long-lost brat," he replied. She could hear him well enough.
"Then tell me what I want to know."
"I can't."
"Liar."
Nanku drew the Swarm into a mass that divided the room. The women couldn't see or hear so if that was why he kept his mouth shut he needn't worry.
"Now?" Nanku asked.
The man scoffed.
"I can't. You think I know anything? I know nothing. I'm a doer. I get told to do something and I get it done. Used to be I did it for Max Anders. Now I do it for someone else."
Nanku leaned closer toward him and breathed through her nose. "Max Anders is responsible?"
There was a flicker in his eye. Confusion and surprise.
…
What did he think she was talking about?
"You're here about the camp," he said aloud. "That's why you're hunting us down? Revenge?"
"Justice," Nanku hissed.
The hiss became a roar.
"I was there! I watched them die one by one by one as those things tore through their chests and fed on them!"
Nanku pulled the net and slammed her fist into his face. The blow was light. A force repelled her and the contact wasn't as hard as she wanted.
She didn't care.
"They're dead! And I will have who killed them!"
Krieg hung in the net even more confused.
"It was an accident," he said. "The truck carrying the samples crashed on a mountain road and containment was breached."
For a moment she thought she heard actual remorse in his voice.
"Those kids weren't supposed to die. No one planned to kill them. The driver ignored safety regulations. He didn't take his nap. Fell asleep at the wheel. And he crashed."
Nanku believed him.
Krieg certainly looked like he wanted to believe it himself.
"By the time we tracked him down and found the truck, those things were already loose. We sent a warning to the Protectorate, but it was too late. The camp was ten miles away through the woods. It wasn't the first place anyone looked."
Nanku's hands balled at her side.
"Why?"
"I told—"
"Why did you have the eggs! Why did you steal them from the—From where you found them?"
He gave her another odd look, and said, "All I know, is that our partners in Europe found something in Africa and wanted to exploit it. They didn't tell us that their agents were dropping like Jew—"
Nanku punched him. Which again didn't work but it shut him up.
"Flies," he growled. "Happy?"
"Do I look happy?"
"If we knew whatever the hell your group is was trying to get those things back and was killing left and right, we'd never have taken possession. I'd have convinced Max not to do it."
"It was his idea?"
"He wanted better ties. More support." Krieg got a sad look, and added, "Changed his mind after your lot killed his wife."
"Fenja and Menja mentioned it," Nanku replied. "I don't care."
"You're wasting your time either way. I don't know where the last egg is."
…
"What?"
At that, his eyes went wide. "You—"
Nanku rammed her spear into his gut and pushed. His power was strong but apparently she was stronger. Not that Krieg was a slouch. He grimaced and inhaled with a ghastly sound, but he kept his face mostly straight.
"What do you mean"—Nanku twisted the spear—"the last egg?"
No.
No that was bad.
No that couldn't be right. Pe'dte was hunting the eggs. She would have tracked them all down. R'ka eggs used in hunts were marked. They were tracked!
Nanku released her weapon and quickly tapped at her computer. Her system wasn't wide-range, but if there was a tracking isotope actively—
Her mask pinged when she checked.
A steady beep. One dot after another and another and another and it wasn't stopping. That wasn't there before. The ship would have detected anything of the sort. Pe'dte wouldn't have left Earth if she wasn't finished. Not after her sons—
Her sons.
A tiny little girl who had to die because she'd seen too much.
And a mother who saw her children die.
"What have you done?" Nanku muttered.
"Nothing," Krieg spat. "After the camp, Max said bury what was left and it was buried. I couldn't find where if I tried."
"How?!"
"The point was to lose it!"
Damned fools.
Nanku grabbed her spear and ripped it from his stomach.
She called her swarm, Dusk, and Dawn, and rushed from the house. Her swarm covered her while she ran. The house vanished from her range, and she left the three of them there to be found by whoever bothered to give a damn about them.
Nanku had bigger problems.
She scrambled and stopped at the first phone she found.
Which was not the phone in Krieg's house or any of the houses she'd passed. Fuck.
She pushed loose coins into the stupid slot and quickly brought the number back up on her mask. Bitch had dialed it and Nanku saw.
The number rang and picked up far too late for Nanku's taste.
"If this is anyone in the Adepts—"
"Shut up," Nanku snapped.
"Nanku?" Tattletale asked. "Bitch is fifty miles away. Why the hell are you calling from Boston?"
"Wha—" Nanku stilled. "You sent me here!"
There was a pause.
"No," she said. "I didn't."
"What? Bu—"
"Fuck. That's why you let Kid Win live. She tricked you into thinking she was me."
"Who?"
"Why are you calling?"
"WHO?"
"Nanku. Why are you calling?"
"There's one egg left?"
"… Context?"
"The R'ka! The things that murdered everyone at camp. There's one left!"
"Okay. In the future, lead with the bad part that needs to be immediately dealt with because fuck Evil-Me probably has it already."
Nanku stared down the street.
"Evil you?"
"Long story."
"You're a villain."
"Semantics."